10 point summary: free social media marketing industry report April 2010

by Steve Seager

This April 2010 social media marketing report ‘How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses’ by social media examiner is well worth sharing with your colleagues. Highly recommended.

I’ve made a summary for you, but I’d like you to do something in return! Take a read and ask yourself one question: “Why aren’t you doing more with social media marketing?” I’d love you to post a comment and tell me why. Maybe I can help point you in the right direction?

The benefits of social media marketing Steve blog

Here’s my summary of the report, followed by a link to the free downloadable pdf. The 1898 respondents were mainly from the US, aged 40-49 as a median, 60% female, 57% in B2B and 43% B2C. And so to the summary…

1. How do they use social media?

  • 91% of respondents said they were using social media for marketing
  • Small businesses were slightly more likely to be doing it than large businesses

2. Experience with social media marketing

  • 65% have either just started or using it for a few months

3. Time invested

  • 56% invest 6 hours or more each week
  • 30% for 11 or more each week
  • Starters typically invest 1 hour a week, investing more as they see results

4. What do they say are the key benefits?

  • 85% generated exposure for their businesses
  • 65% improved traffic
  • 56% built new business partnerships

5. Closing business

  • 73.8% with more than a year’s experience closed business

6. Generated exposure for my business

  • Owners of small businesses were more likely than others to report greater exposure (89.2% closed deals)

7. New business partnerships

  • 53.1% of people who invested just a couple of months said they built new business partnerships

8. Generated new leads

  • With 6 hours a week, and after only a few months, 50% of them generated qualified leads with social media marketing

9. The cost of social media marketing

  • The time it starts to gain success. However, costs dropped once social media marketing was implemented

10. Helped us rise in the search rankings

  • 73% improved search engine rankings

And the report is here.

I look forward to your comments!

Previous post:

Next post: